In recent years, photography has been transformed from chemical based technologies to digital imaging technologies. A phenomenon associated with digital photography is the large number of images that an average user can generate and have to organize in a short period of time. A typical vacation trip can easily produce hundreds to thousands of digital images. Digital images can be captured by different types of imaging devices. A typical household may own a number of image capture devices such as single-lens reflex (SLR) and point-and-shoot digital cameras manufactured by Canon, Nikon, Kodak, HP, etc., camera phones made by Nokia, Apple Computer, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc., and video cameras that can take still images.
The captured images can be stored on local computer devices or remote servers, and can be viewed locally or online. Digital images can also be used to create personalized image products such as photo books, photo calendars, photo cards, photo stationeries, photo prints, photo mugs, photo T-shirts, and so on. Some image products (e.g. photo books, calendars, and collages) can incorporate tens to hundreds of images obtained by different image capture devices. Some image usages involve digital images taken by different users. For example, an image share site may publish a large number of images captured with different devices by different users that are associated with each other in an extended family, as classmates, members of a club or a sport team, etc.
A challenge associated with organizing digital images is that the digital images from different imaging devices often do not carry consistent information. The file names from different cameras are different. Some image capture devices include EXIF (Exchangeable image file format) header files; but some don't. Additionally, the information stored in the EXIF header files may not be correct. For example, many users do not set the clocks in their digital cameras. The clock times of many cameras are still based on the default start times (12:00:00 2006/1/1, 12:00:00 2008/1/1/) originally set in the factories.
There is therefore a need to effectively organize a large number of images to allow users to conveniently create image products and share images.